The name Charles Manson quickly became a synonym for unimaginable evil, which nobody knows better than Debra Tate, Sharon's little sister, and Barbara Hoyt, the Manson family member whose testimony helped put the killers in prison. "We've got a lot in common," said Hoyt, now a retired nurse. "She has been a big help to me." "She makes sure I am holding my head up high," Tate said, "and I do the same for her."

Even now not a day passes without Hoyt dwelling on the suffering Manson and her former comrades inflicted and on the widespread terror that ensued. We are completely linked by this event whether we want to be or not," she said of Debra Tate, who now runs a crime victims group. "She understands me, and I understand where she's coming from."

That is when the lives of Barbara Hoyt and Debra Tate began to intertwine. Over the decades, each as written letters to parole panels urging that the killers never be released, and each has traveled to obscure California farming towns for parole hearings in prisons housing some of the state's most notorious convicts.

"Over time our mutual efforts brought us together," Hoyt said. Now they talk regularly on the phone and get together when they're in the same town, usually for a parole hearing. Tate lives in the Southern California desert, and Hoyt in the Pacific Northwest, the specific location she wants to keep secret. MORE FROM THIS SOURCE...

Thursday, September 10, 2009, By BRENDAN KIRBY, Staff Reporter Press-Register. A Web site used by a Somali jihadist group that has been tied to a suspected terrorist from Daphne was hosted by an Internet company based in the United States, according to a private investigator.